The Guidebook Experiment Discovering Exploration in a Hyper-Connected World

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Our modern day, multimedia, information-obsessed culture has fundamentally altered much of what we do day-to-day. The way we shop and pay bills. The way we communicate. The way we research, study, and learn.

In the realm of travel we have more tools than ever telling us where to go, how to get there, what it will look like, what to do, and why we should go in the first place. This proliferation of constantly updated data has changed the way we go about our journeys. But how?

By tracing the evolution of the guidebook from pilgrim manuals and Baedeker’s books to Yelp reviews and Google Maps, David Bockino explores the effects this information growth has had on the state of travel and adventure. Inspired by some of the world’s greatest explorers, he sets out guidebook-less to a destination he knows little about, launching an experiment to determine just how the guidebook and its digital descendants have transformed the nature of travel.

The Guidebook Experiment is a call-to-action to conduct our own guidebook experiments, to disconnect from the ceaseless barrage of information in modern life and explore an unknown neighborhood or unfamiliar country and discover the joy of travel on our own.

David Bockino is a Ph.D student and a Roy H. Park Fellow at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Before returning to school for his doctoral degree in 2012, he worked in the media business for seven years, doing research, sales, and marketing for the U.S. and International divisions of ESPN. An inspired wanderer, he has been fortunate to see much of the world through independent travel and, until now, has always used a guidebook. He lives in Durham, NC.